'Completely understood,' Anderson said. She nodded to Claire. 'You'd best be on your way, Claire. This doesn't concern you.'
'Okay,' Claire said, and hesitated for a second. There was a very weird feeling in the air, in the way these four official types were facing off with her professor. 'Are you sure you don't need me to call anyone, or ...?'
The woman looked irritated. 'Who do you think you're going to call? Beat it before I find a security reason to make you stay.'
Dr Anderson gave her a look that Claire interpreted as go ahead, and Claire collected her backpack and headed for the door to badge out. As she did, she turned back and said, 'Oh, Dr Anderson, should I let your next appointment know you'll be delayed?'
'Yes,' Anderson said, without any hesitation at all. 'Just call Dr Florey and let him know.'
'I will,' she said.
Dr Florey. Jesse and Pete had said they worked at Florey's Bar and Grill. And of course, Jack Florey himself was an entirely imaginary person, the mascot of Fifth East. So there was definitely a message in that.
The door opened, and Claire exited before any of the agents could ask her anything else. She walked quickly down the hall, expecting to hear fast footsteps behind her; she half expected her badge to fail at the next security station, but it flashed green as she swiped it, and she escaped into the academic side of the building.
She had a million questions firing off in her mind, but until she found Dr Anderson alone and able to answer them, there wasn't much point in considering them. Still, the fact that Anderson was apparently neck-deep in spy science was ... well, chilling. More chilling than the vampire stuff, since Claire was accustomed now to thinking of it as normal.
Claire ducked into one of the student lounge areas, found a worn-out, battered couch that didn't have anyone currently napping on it, and took out her phone to look up the number for Florey's. She found it on the Internet, called and asked for Jesse.
The roar on the other end of the phone indicated it was definitely happy hour. 'She's busy,' said the man who'd answered; he had to shout to be heard over the noise. 'Call back later.'
'Wait - I-'
No good. The phone went dead. She called back, and it rang a long time, but no one picked up. Not too surprising. She supposed that they probably couldn't hear it over the shouting. Must have been some kind of sport on TV, from the cheering.
Just call Dr Florey and let him know, Anderson had said. There wasn't any doubt in Claire's mind that she meant Jesse and Pete.
Well, if they wouldn't answer the phone, there was only one thing to do:
Go there.
Claire had never been to Florey's - she wasn't old enough to legally drink, and exploring places full of ominous strangers after dark ... well, in Morganville, that would have made her survival-deficient. Here, she supposed, it just made her more socially inept, but she was okay with that. She hadn't felt any urge to explore the local party places favoured by students, and Liz wasn't the going-out-to-party type, either. Given the stalking, she was way too paranoid for that.
That didn't mean Claire didn't know where the bars were, though; it was just part of the landscape, like the textbook stores and bubble tea shops and Laundromats. Alcohol was an essential student service, she guessed. At least for some.
She didn't dare take time to walk, so she flagged down a cab and paid the fare to Florey's; once she got there, though, she was more than a little taken aback, because the place was packed. There was a football game on TV, and through the open door she could see that the small space inside was packed with drinking, cheering people. She couldn't even glimpse the bar, much less see if Jesse was working behind it.
There was a guy sitting on a three-legged stool outside of the single wide door. It wasn't Pete, but he was obviously an official bouncer; he gave Claire a blank, assessing look as she walked up, and said, 'ID.' That was all, no hello how are you. Not the chatty type.
She quickly took her wallet out and showed him her identification, and he glanced at it and nodded. 'Drinking age is twenty-one,' he said. 'In case you're a foreign student. No, we don't care if it's sixteen in your home country. Five bucks cover.'
He held out his hand.
'I just need to go in and talk to somebody.'
'Really? Never heard that one before, cutie. Five bucks or get out of line.' Because there were people queued up behind her now, she realised; they were all older than she was. Claire fumbled in her wallet, pulled out a five dollar bill, and passed it over, and he reached down and grabbed a bright neon-green armband out of a box, and snugged it tight on her wrist. 'Water, soft drinks, tea, coffee. Got it?'
'Yes,' she said.
'Go on with you.'
'I - I'm looking for Pete. Or Jesse.'
That got her an entirely different look, one of surprise; the bouncer leant forward a little and studied her again. 'Not a good time,' he said. 'It's busy in there. Jesse's up to her neck in bottle caps and booze, and Pete needs to keep an eye on everything inside. He doesn't need distracting.'
'I have a message for him,' Claire said. It sounded as if Pete would be easier to get to than Jesse, anyway. 'Where do I find him?'
'Beats me. Good luck finding him. Next!'
She had no real option but to push forward into the crowded room, where she was instantly lost in the roar of conversation, clinking bottles and glasses, the sharp smell of spilt beer and sweat and old wood. The glare of the TV screens washed over her, and turned everyone in the darkened room odd colours, with twisted and distorted faces. If she knew anyone here, she probably wouldn't recognise them. Bodies crowded hot against her and surged forward as a runner sprinted forward on the TV; the roar that washed over her was deafening.
I'm never going to find them, she thought in despair, and then she caught sight of Jesse's red hair on the far side of the bar, which was on the far side of the room. It was just a flash, but definitely her - not just the hair, but the pale skin and the self-assured smile.
Finding Pete in this mob looked like a lost cause, but at least Jesse was stationary. Claire swam against the tide, heading for the bar, and then ran into a solid knot of young men and women all waiting three or four deep for their own turn. Claire felt suffocated; she was too short and too thin to make her own space against a horde of people who were either drinking, impatient to be drinking or drunk.
'Hey,' a voice next to her said, and Claire saw a tall young man standing close by, leaning in. 'You need to order something? Let me be your hero.'
'If you want to be my hero, tell the red-headed bartender that Claire needs to see her out back,' Claire said. 'Please?'
He grinned. He was a good-looking guy, cocky and confident of his ability to get anything he wanted. 'As long as you promise to have a drink with me later.'
'I'm not your type,' she said, and gave him a mysterious smile. He raised his eyebrows, looked over the sea of heads and focused on Jesse, then back on Claire.
'Oh,' he said. 'Right. Sorry. Well, what kind of hero would I be if I didn't help out with a hot bartender hook-up? Gotcha covered. You sure I can't bring you back a drink or anything?'
'I'm sure,' Claire said. She'd been to enough parties in Morganville to know that she shouldn't let strangers get her drinks, ever. 'Thanks.'
'Brian,' he said. 'Brian Taylor. Of the Boston Taylors.' He said that last in a funny drawling accent, and - as much as possible, in the crush - gave her an old-fashioned from-the-waist bow. He didn't do it very well, when measured up against Myrnin and his old-school elegance, but she gave him points for effort. 'And you are ...?'
'Claire Danvers, of the nobody in particular,' she said. 'Thanks, Brian. I appreciate it.'
'No worries. Go on. I'll have her meet you out there.'
He pressed forward toward the bar, and Claire let the current of people sweep her back the other way. Something bad must have happened on the screen, because there was a collective groan, followed by violent shouting and gesturing, and she had to duck to avoid getting either a beer in the face, or an elbow in the head.
In the process of ducking, she caught sight of someone in a long white apron coming through the double doors behind the bar, carrying a gigantic tray full of - she assumed - freshly washed bar glasses. And for a second she froze, because everything about that split-second glance, everything, told her she knew him.
It was a flash, nothing more, and the guy carrying the tray was moving fast to deliver the glasses, but she could have sworn, however irrationally, that ...
That it was Shane.
But of course it wasn't. In the next few seconds she stood on tiptoe and tried to get another look, but there were too many people in the way, and besides, Shane was in Morganville. It was a tall guy, broad shoulders, brown hair. There were probably hundreds of thousands of guys fitting that description in Cambridge and Boston. She was missing him so badly that she was projecting his face onto others who just fit some template.